Effects of Design Parameters on Aerodynamic Performance of New Profile Small Wind Turbine Blades

Abstract

Wind is a one of the clean resources of energy and has the ability to contribute a considerable share in growing world energy consumption. The small wind turbine plays a vital role in fulfillment of energy needs preferably for household purpose. In order to unleash the budding of applicability of small wind turbine, it is necessary to improve its performance. The performance of a small wind turbine can be distinguished by the manners in which power, thrust and torque vary with the wind speed. The wind power indicates the amount of energy captured by the wind turbine rotor. It is convenient to express the performance of small wind turbine by means of non-dimensional performance curves, therefore in this paper the most graphs are drawn to power, thrust and torque coefficients as a function of the tip speed ratio. This paper presents the effect of design parameters such as the tip speed ratio, angle of attack, wind speed, solidity, number of blades, etc. on the aerodynamic performance of small wind turbine and proposes the optimum values of these parameters for the newly designed blade. The new designed blade consists of two new airfoils and named as IND 15045 and IND 09848. This new profile blade is designed for a wind turbine of 1 kW rated power. The blade is divided into ten sections. The designed length of blade is 1.5 m and it is made using IND 15045 airfoils at three root sections and IND 09848 airfoils for remaining seven sections. Q-Blade is used for the numerical simulation of wind turbine airfoils and blade. It is integrated tool of XFOIL and blade element momentum theory of wind turbine blade design. Also the effect of constant rotational speed operation, effect of stall regulation effect of rotational speed change and the effect of solidity on the performance of wind turbine is discussed. This paper delivers a broad view of perception for design of small wind turbine and parameter selection for the new wind turbine blade. Also in this paper the effect of different losses viz. tip losses, drag losses, stall losses and hub losses on the small wind turbine are discussed. The efficiency of the small wind turbine varies significantly with wind speed, but it would be designed such a way that maximized efficiencies are achieved at the wind speed where the maximum energy is available.